The Worse I Do, The Better I Feel
by EdenParadise
Summary: Elena didn't want this. She didn't want to be loved nor have sweet nothings whispered into her ear. Not if Stefan wasn't the one doing it. Now, she just wants to be ravaged and lusted for. Too bad Damon had other ideas...And Elena just might not agree.


The Worse I Do The Better I Feel: It's Always Worse Before It Gets Better

_Summary:_ _Elena didn't want this. She did not want to be loved nor have sweet nothings whispered into her ear. Not if Stefan wasn't the one doing it. Now, she just wants to be ravaged and lusted for. Too bad Damon has other ideas…Now we get to see when too much alcohol and a broken girl mix dangerously under the circumstances._

_._

_._

_And if I fall along the way_

_Pick me up and dust me off._

_And if I get too tired to make it_

_Be my breath so I can walk._

_And if I need some other loving_

_Give me more than I can stand._

_And when my smile gets old and faded_

_Wait around, I'll smile again._

"_Bent"-Matchbox Twenty_

.

.

God, she missed this.

It seemed that of all the atrocious situations to get into, this one seemed to be the most dependable; the most reliable. It wasn't the swirling, intoxicating lights or the smoke filled atmosphere that made it hard to think. It wasn't even the sensual music that seemed to pulsate from the very ground and made the whole world seem to tilt at the edges, making everything a little more wild and piercing. What made it hard to think was the fact that a very stubborn mind refused to make it easy to contemplate. If she thought about how her life used to always be like this, like the world was hers for the taking, then surly some switch would go off and she would stop functioning entirely.

But she was tired of fighting these memories, tired of drowning through a tidal wave of emotions that she contained deep in her heart.

So fuck it. Who needed sanity? Who needed to be the good girl everyday of their life? Why not go out and trash yourself just because you could?

Elena smiled, but even then it was forced, like her face was cracking in two under the force. It was a start though. Her pinky traced the outer rim of her shot glass. It was sugary and sweet and she didn't know how many she had had. Five? Seven? The numbers swirled together in her mind, making intense patterns on the front of her brain. She didn't even know what the drink was; didn't care. As long as the frisky young bartender kept on looking at her like she was something to eat and didn't ask for ID, then who gave a flying fuck? Maybe she would even take him home with her. Well, to the Boarding House. She had to remind herself that she didn't have a real home.

There should have been a pang in her heart, some tell-tale sign to show that deep inside herself there was still the same old Elena. The girl who worried about everything and mourned over all the people she has lost. And maybe she would have felt something, but she was so many drinks in that everything seemed fine; a little hazy and unfocused, but still fine.

Now, all she had to concentrate on was getting the words past her sticky lips to form a coherent sentence. Another drink would do her good. And then she was going to dance. Hopefully she wouldn't be leaving until early in the morning. And when she did it was going to be with someone, preferably a tall male.

As the booming music in the back ground filled her ears, she turned her gaze back towards the bartender. He was _very_ friendly. "What does a girl have to do around here to get another shot?" She sounded smashed, even to her own ears.

The bartender, Luke, looked at her. That wasn't concern was it? Like hell. She wouldn't tolerate that. She didn't want to be pitied! She wanted alcohol and a nice warm body to grind against in the near future. "I hope you know I can be _extremely_ persuasive." She leaned against the top of the counter, watching with satisfaction as his leering gaze fell to the cleavage spilling out of her tight top. Her clumsy fingers readjusted her leather skirt back into its place, which in reality was barely covering anything anyway. As she pushed the glass towards Luke for him to fill up again, she fiddled in the pocket of her vest. By some miracle she grasped the tiny object and put it in her mouth, lighting it up successfully on the sixth try. Good thing she didn't set herself on fire.

She didn't usually smoke. Her parents frowned upon it and her friends did also. So like the good person she thought she was…she stopped. But her parents were dead and basically all her friends were too. So there was no one to stop her from doing what she craved. Infect, some people even approved of her cigarette use. Those people being Damon. He smoked with her daily. Not like the drug use could kill him. All it could do was give him a nasty buzz. Lucky bastard.

She exhaled the smoke, the familiar scent filling her lungs and fanning over her face. She was gonna smell nasty later, but so what? It wasn't like she had a hot date or something. Maybe a one night stand, but odds are that person would be as hammered as she was at the moment, so it didn't really matter what he thought.

For the tiniest of moments there was a voice in her head. It said, 'What are you doing to yourself? What would Stefan think?'

Elena jumped up in her seat, the cigarette dangling dangerously from her mouth. When she settled back down on her stool, she tapped her stiletto clad foot. Where was that damn bartender with her drink?

Stefan was gone. Stefan was nothing but a memory and she wasn't going to allow herself the satisfaction of thinking of _him_. She was done thinking. She was going to move on. She was going to drink and dance and sleep with random men, do drugs, stay up late. Hell, maybe she would even sleep with Damon a couple of times. Anything to get rid of the lingering pain that still clouded the very corners of her mind. She had just recently gotten rid of most of the ache, but now she was saving the most extreme of her activities to get rid of the hardest to reach pain. And getting together with Damon seemed like the perfect way. But he wouldn't let her. She had tried many times, letting him plainly see how much she wanted him. Did she really want him because she loved him? No, of course not. She didn't love anyone. If she got too attached then when the person died it would just give away to more stubborn pain that was even harder to get rid of. It was only logical thinking obviously.

No, sleeping with Damon just seemed like the best way to make herself feel nothing. It was the ultimate sin. Nobody would ever approve and that just made it all the better.

Luke suddenly reappeared, her frosty drink in his hand. He slid it over to her and she picked it up greedily, hungry for more of that burning sensation sliding down her throat. She was already tipping her head back when she noticed Luke was looking at her again. With that damn concerned look on his handsome face. She slammed the drink down on the wet bar, the contents spilling on her hand.

"And just what the fuck do you think you're looking at?" She should've been nicer. Good girls didn't talk like that, but then again she wasn't a good girl, not anymore. She was allowed to scream all the profanities she wanted.

He shook his head and Elena took another drag of her cigarette, blowing the smoke straight into his face. But he didn't even flinch. She scowled at him, waiting for a reply. When she didn't get anything she just glared harder.

"Alright, cut the shit. Tell me why you keep on looking at me like a charity case." She was trying to scream but it came out in a gargle of slurred words, the beating song in the room cutting off her loud tone. She tossed what was left of her drink in her mouth. The sweet, tingling feeling was invading her body again, making even her feet feel tingly.

"You sure do come here a lot." His voice was pleasantly husky, a natural bed room voice. It would've warmed the Good Girl Elena but now it just made her feel sick. He sounded like _him_, and she hated him for it.

She still had enough muster left in her to snap back. "And is that a problem for some reason? If you don't want me here then you can just leave me the fuck alone. No way in hell I'm leaving this spot." As if to make her point and mark the location as her own, she took her cigarette again and stubbed it out on the wet bar, watching as the flame slowly died. She flicked it on the ground and crushed it under her high heel. Yeah, she was _not _taking this boy home. Not if they were the last human beings on earth and had to rebuild the population in order to survive.

Bartender Boy simply shrugged, as if he couldn't care less what she wanted to do and what trash she had to talk about him. Better, much better. She liked it better when he was eating her up with his eyes and not talking some crap.

"I just don't understand why Elena Gilbert would spend her time in some seedy bar when she should be home. I know your only 17."

She snorted and rolled her glazed over eyes. Like she gave a shit what some washed up bartender thought about her? She didn't even care that he somehow knew who she was. As far as she knew, everyone knew who she was, whether she liked it or not. She had been caught doing drugs in school. It was on the news. She remembered Damon picking her up and then when they got in the house she burst out into heated tears. She cried until she ruined one of Damon's best shirts. She said she was broken and that she didn't know what she was doing. But she was tougher now. It would take a lot more than getting caught for something like that to faze her.

She managed to get another drop of liquid from her glass as she shifted in her seat, the thin layer of sweat making her skirt stick to her. She was getting a little uncomfortable now, a little too tipsy for her liking. Her face was flushed and her fingers twitched uneasily, eager to do something illegal or naughty. Maybe both. Damon called this her 'crash time.' It was the time when he wanted her home.

"I just want you to call me when you feel like you're about to do something bad. That's all I ask of you." He had said to her a couple of weeks ago. And that was it. He didn't try to reason with her and convince her to stay home so he could keep a watchful eye over her.

She wasn't freaking suicidal. Well, not yet at least. She was still willing to dapple in all kinds of life threatening things these days. Infect, she wasn't even ready to leave. Damon would just have to wait, even though she still felt like doing something borderline insane. And disobeying Damon was about as crazy as one could get. But she had done it before, so really. What was the harm?

"Alright, let's face it." She pouted. "You're a pain in my leather covered ass, but I am willing to forgive you for your rude attitude. So why don't we cut to the chase and you take me home with you before my friend comes to drag me out of here." She reached over to grab her purse and squirmed to get out of her seat before she fell over.

He grabbed her arm before she could topple to the glitter covered ground. She yanked it back, hard, hitting herself in the chest.

No. She did not do physical contact. Unless it was in the bedroom then all of that damn touchy feely stuff was off limits. After her mental breakdown with Damon she did not allow anyone to touch her without getting her horny first. And this guy did not fit the bill.

She stamped her heel on the floor, narrowing her eyes as best as she could in her heavily drunken state. Maybe the bad thing her mind was begging her to commit would be to take the broken bottle on her left and slash the bartender with it. Teach him his lesson on not touching pretty girls when they were clearly not excepting his company. She smacked her butt down on the seat again. She didn't want to, though. She wanted to go dance but her mind couldn't stop her motions. It was as if she was looking at things through a piece of plastic while the room seemed to swirl with racket and the smell of sex and alcohol.

"Don't you fucking touch me! Do you hear me?" She was dimly aware that she took the glass and threw it towards him, spilling some of the fillings against his body until the crystal bounced off his stomach and smashed to the ground. She almost jumped at the sound of the shards hitting the hard surface, but she quickly composed herself. She really needed to get home now. Things were going to get bad. The boy in front of her staring with wide eyes was proof enough of that.

But after a while a small chuckle left his lips. It rapidly turned into a full blown hoot, his chest falling up and down vastly and the hollow in his throat growing deeper with each passing breath. Okay…what the fuck was his deal?

"Oh, wow." He rubbed at his eyes. "I never would have guessed."

"Guessed what exactly?" She sneered. She had had about enough of this jack-ass.

He snickered again, dragging it out as long as possible. "I just never would have guessed that Elena Gilbert is just another cheap whore, begging to sleep with men desperate enough." Yup, definitely a first class jack-ass.

Something inside her seemed to snap and her hand tingled all over, really wanting to reach towards that bottle more than ever before. But then she would be put in jail. Damon wouldn't like that.

"You know what?" She lazily extended her middle finger towards his face. "Fuck you and your ugly ass girlfriend or boyfriend or whoever the hell you pretend to sleep with at night. You sure as hell won't be getting any from me." And with that she stumbled off her stool and landed with a _thunk_ as her killer shoes made contact with the flooring. She could do this. One foot in front of the other. She had gone about five stumbling steps when she noticed something. She shifted uncomfortably, nudging her miniskirt down some and making sure her vest was completely covering her. And that is when it hit her. Her eyes…they were damp. And that lump in her throat hadn't always been there, had it? She hadn't cried in what seemed like an eternity. There was no way she was going to start now. Just because some sad-sack of a boy seemed to think she was a whore didn't mean she could just hole up in a corner and wallow in self-pity. Hell, she had been called a lot worse than that in the past couple months. 'Slut' being one of the nicest. She wasn't any of those things. She just had some things to deal with. Everyone seemed to handle things differently and this was her way. And why was it his business anyway? Boy obviously needed a life to go with his fat mouth and the ego to match.

So, she was going to do what she always felt like doing when she got flustered to the point where it came to a problem; to a point where it could have showed just how fragile she really was. She was going to dance until her feet fell off. She was going to dance until all the sad thoughts had left her body and she was nursing an immense hangover.

The guys in front of her grinding steadily to the beat of the trashy tune playing seemed easy enough. Might as well start there and see where that got her. She couldn't leave, not now. If she left then she might have another panic attack. Damon had dealt with those about a thousand times so he knew exactly what to do, but she wasn't nervous about that. She was worried because the attacks royally sucked ass. She couldn't breathe and every time she tried to, she only got a burning fire in her chest.

She made her way forward, locking eyes with the sexy redhead who screamed of wicked sex and sins. He seemed to be the type of man who rocked your world for one night and then had the stamina to go another round shortly after. And then in the morning, he had no problem separating with you and forgetting the whole ordeal like it never happened, even if there was more than enough evidence on the bed sheets.

Perfect.

She messily threw her hair over her shoulders and jutted out her chest, eyes forward and hips swaying. She was going in, guns hot. Hoping this guy wouldn't try to touch her unless it was remotely sexual, the corners of her finger tips danced across his chest as she got close enough to see that he had the most beautiful blue eyes. But they were only second best next to Damon. They were always second best next to Damon.

And she was right about the touching. His hands didn't have the affection that she dreaded in his caress. They were hot and demanding as they slid across the sheen of sweat that covered her cleavage. She absently wondered how intimately they could touch each other before they got thrown out and told to go get a room.

As she swayed to the beat, she found that Redhead had pushed himself to the curves and contours of her backside. She felt that even though she hadn't done that much touching at all, he was still hard, painfully so, she guessed. It must be uncomfortable to be a horny man in tight jeans. Well, you get in return what you dished out.

They always wanted her, especially when she was dressed like a minx and her eyes were heavily made up. She obviously could have passed for a twenty something hooker. And maybe that was only the reason Redhead was thrusting his hips towards her. They only wanted her for her body and looks, nothing more and nothing less. But maybe that was all she really wanted. She didn't want to be loved. What she wanted was to be lusted for. She didn't want to make love to her knight in shining armor. She wanted sex, hot and clumsy with the drunken mumblings of exchanged information, like what their names actually were. If that was all it took for some of the raw agony to go away then so be it. At moments like this she was desperate to forget, to simply not feel.

Mr. Redhead seemed to take a liking to her thighs, his hands sliding down the smooth exposed flesh. And there was a lot of it, too. But now she wasn't too sure whether she liked that or not. This didn't feel right, and this was coming from the girl who threw her intoxicated body at willing men every night. And maybe that was the problem. She did this every night, the same thing over and over again until even Damon was getting worried for her health. She remembered the awkward conversation they had had one night when she had just gotten back from a dingy hotel on the outside of town. She had just got done getting down and dirty with some cheap boy and she couldn't help but notice that Damon looked at her like she was a lost cause with a ravenous sex drive. But he also knew she wasn't doing this for sex. She didn't even really like sex that much.

"_You know that if you keep throwing yourself at men that you're going to end up with some weird STD, don't you? Don't you think you should just tone it down a smidge?"_

_And then she remembered not believing he could ever say something like that. She would be fine. She was old enough to take care of herself. She was a big girl and she didn't really have much of a choice anyway._

"_How about I make you a deal?" She had said, turning to Damon while sucking down more of the smoke from her cigarette. This time Damon didn_'t _join her. "I will stop having casual sex with the whole male species if you let me sleep with you." She smiled, but deep in her heart she knew that this whole thing was just wrong, wrong, and wrong. Why was she doing this again? Because she felt broken? Like nothing really mattered anymore? There had to be something more there. There had to be a good enough reason. But she found that she couldn't really find one thing._

_Damon had looked at her, the most heart wrenching expression on his face. It was sure a low blow on her heart, too. She almost couldn't take it. She was almost ready to break down in yet another panic attack and tell him how sorry she was that she was such a disgrace. She wanted to make it all better, but she was too far in the jungle and couldn't find her way out. The only way was to keep moving forward._

_He had reached forward towards her face when he suddenly stopped. He knew how much she hated to be touched. Damon always knew the deepest Elena Secrets branded deep within her mind. They always seemed to be one half of a whole, forever thinking what the other wasn't but desperately needed to know. It was just how they functioned._

_Damon took the cigarette from her hand, and tossed it away with a flick of his wrist. "Those will kill you. Your only 17."_

_She shrugged, her tank top strap falling from her left shoulder and Damon put it back in place, careful not to touch her skin. "I don't care."_

"_Is that why you're doing this, Elena? Because you don't care? It seems like a sad way to go to me. The Old Elena wouldn't put up with the New Elena's crap."_

_She could feel it, parts of her heart slowly chipping away. "No, I do this because there is nothing better to do."_

"_Lie. We both know why you do this, why you are slowly killing yourself." She was about to protest that she wasn't doing that, but he kept on rolling. "And don't you try to deny it either. The drugs, the smoking, the partying. Do you even know how easy it is to get knocked up by some random stranger who doesn't even love you, let alone know you?"_

"_I'm not looking for love, Damon. That's why I want you to shut up and sleep with me already."_

_And that made Damon go mute. She watched with a grim fascination as all of the fight and glimmer and his eyes turned off. She could tell right now that her words had hurt him the most. She could disobey him all she wanted but when you brought up love to him it was like some switch had been turned._

"_I don't know what kind of sick game you're playing," he snarled at her. "But it needs to stop. I'm tired of watching you waste away like it's nothing; like your nothing." And with that he simply got up from his spot on the couch. He could do that all he wanted but she knew he would never walk away from her, not really. If he ever did then she didn't know what would happen. Would she try to follow like some love sick little puppy or would she stay behind and try to put her life back together? Was that even possible at this point?_

The thought of Damon leaving her had her thoughts turn back over to the present where the redhead was still profoundly grinding into her rear. She felt sick. Maybe she really should have gone home. She never really spent much time at a club after her 'crash time.' She had usually always had Damon pick her up when she felt like harming herself or others. But she hadn't done that tonight, or this morning to be exact. Maybe it had some side effects to it. She was sure about to find that out.

She didn't feel like she wanted to hurt someone or do something wild. She felt like curling up in bed with a hot cup of tea and occasionally getting up to nosily vomit. She definitely did not like the way these men were looking at her, their leering gazes seemed to stick to her skin like a bad stain that you couldn't get out. Any other night would have been different. She would have welcomed these looks. They made her feel sexy; wanted. Tonight they just made her feel vile.

But if there was something Elena was good at, it was putting on a poker face and pretending that everything was just dandy. She pretended she liked the way all these people in the room seemed to suffocate her with all this body heat and too much cheap perfume. Because that was all that these people were: Cheap. They were all begging for attention, maybe just for the same reasons she was. Maybe they were all just a lost as she was. But she highly doubted that Redhead didn't know the direction he was going in. He seemed like he knew exactly where he was steering and then landing. She hoped it wouldn't be anywhere near her.

"How about we get out of here. What do you think about that?"

_I think that you're disgusting,_ she thought. Damon was right. She shouldn't be violating her body like this. She shouldn't be letting willing men take over her body like some inexpensive slut. Where was the Elena with the fire, the want?

_She's gone. You left her when Stefen went._ The voice in her head rang out, louder than the crowd and the music combined. The sound made her shiver, which Redhead took as an invitation, thinking it was desire rather than the fleeting feeling of running and never looking back.

He took her hand. It was warm and slightly sweaty. It made her skin crawl. Even as he led her threw the mob of people she couldn't get her feet to stop. So this was the bad thing she was going to do. She was going to let this _thing_ take advantage of her body. What was Damon going to think?

Suddenly, she felt the cold wind bite into her exposed flesh. Where were they? Oh, they were outside. So it was going to be this way. They were going to do this outside in some alleyway. They were going to do this in some cold, dark and dirty alleyway where people were free to come and go. That was all she was anyway. She was nothing, so why should she be treated any better? It was kind of ironic if she thought about it hard enough. This situation was just fucked up enough to where it had some sick and twisted humor to it.

She felt herself being thrown against the grim covered wall that vaguely smelt like sewage. But that was fine because she rarely felt pain anymore. Things were just simpler if you didn't have to deal with it.

She needed to come up with a name for this man with the red hair that was about to taint her. She thought about the title 'Bob' and decided she thought it fitted perfectly.

Right now Bob was roughly yanking her vest open and she cursed herself for not wearing a bra. The air seemed to want to devour her and it was winning.

"Fuck," he rumbled. "You're beautiful."

_No!_ Her mind screamed. _Don't say nice things! Just ravage me. Tell me I'm nothing; that this is all just nothing!_

Bob didn't hear her savage mind-words. But if he did then he showed it by sucking and tearing at one of her nipples that had hardened from her icy state. His hand moved her legs apart until they were under her skirt. No underwear of course. No underwear just proved to be of easier access to wandering hands.

She cried out, from pleasure or pain or maybe even both, she wasn't exactly sure at the moment, as his fingers dipped inside her, arching to where she needed it the most. This is what she needed to forget. His teeth moved from her chest and tore across the skin of her collar bone, probably leaving bloody wakes in its present but she couldn't find a reason to think that it would be a problem.

She couldn't stop her body now and her hands found their way to the zipper of his tight pants. If she was going to hell then it might as well be all the way. The sound of denim sliding down legs was defining to her ears and she liked that the most. It was the cause before the mind blowing effect. She felt Bob's stop inside her and she frowned. Looking up, she found that he was gazing at her. No, she wasn't having any of that. She adverted her eyes and looked back down to the boxer-briefs of this man, trying not to note that Stefan had similar ones.

Yanking down the coverage of cotton proved easy enough and she took his fingers out of her. She sunk down to her knees and took him in her mouth. It was hard and soft all at the same time, an awfully strange contradiction to what it looked like it would be. And even though she had done this many times in what seemed like forever, her thoughts weren't focused on this man. And he _was_ a man. Maybe in his early thirties, but she wasn't exactly sure.

Maybe the reason she couldn't focus on her task was because she was having a sort of a realization. These past few months had been a blur of sex and drugs, a never ending stream of noise and heat. She had never once looked herself over and said: _This is what you are now. Deal with it. _Perhaps she should have given herself a reality check. Maybe she had been too numb the majority of the time to notice that she was wasting away before everyone's eyes.

She _was_ too numb to notice that while Bob was being sucked off, much to his obvious pleasure, he was running his hands threw her long brown hair, seemingly caressing the ends. He bucked his hips and made small incoherent noises. She was 99.9% sure that they mostly consisted of obscenities. And while she bobbed along the shaft, she almost felt herself go green. Who ever invented the blow job was seriously fucked up. Pun intended. Why would anyone in their right mind want to put a penis anywhere near where they ate food? And why slurp on one of the things a male went to the bathroom with? God, this was disgusting. She knew she was gonna get some weird sexually transmitted disease now. It served her right.

Bob bucked his hips for what she hoped was the last time and made a horribly unattractive sound in the back of his throat. She hoped he wasn't crying. Now _that_ would have been embarrassing. He obviously hadn't gotten any from a girl in a long time. All the other guys she hooked up with didn't act or sound like this. She was good but she wasn't _that_ good.

The dreadful spilling of semen (she always hated this moment) filled her mouth, lining the back of her throat. As soon as he turned around she was going to vomit it up as quietly as possible. After all, she did have a reputation to uphold. She sure hoped he looked away soon. It was sticking back there, making it hard to breathe without tasting the evidence of what she had become.

She stayed down on her knees, waiting to see who would move first. She didn't think she could move without wanting to throw up. But she didn't have to because Bob picked up the Boxers and jeans pooled around his ankles and placed it back on his hips, zipping it up with something fierce. She kept her mouth shut, but she was just aching to say: _Wow, some gentlemen you are, asshole! Way to leave a lady hot and bothered while she just sucked you off. You didn't even last that long either! _But she wasn't sure she could do it without swallowing the white coating in her throat.

He waved a beefy hand at her in an awkward gesture. "Thanks, I guess." When he reached into his back pocket, she narrowed her eyes. What did he think he was doing? As his hand came back into view she saw the object. It was small, in the shape of a square and from the looks of it…it seemed like it was leather.

_Oh, God. No. _The voice in her head refused to shut up, continuously repeating the mantra in her head like it was a prayer. And now she saw it for what it really was. It was a wallet. It was a God damn wallet!

He flicked it open and produced a crisp looked ten dollar bill, grazing it through his fingers before throwing it at her. It landed in her lap, but all she could was stare at it like she didn't know what it was or what it was doing there. She couldn't believe he had the balls to do that. And from what she saw he really didn't have balls at all!

As she looked up and glared at him through what she expected to be the eyes of the devil, he winked at her, turning on his heel and just walking away like nothing had happened. When he reached the door it swung open before he could reach the handle. A boy with a tow head popped out.

"Dude, what are you doing out here? It's like twenty degrees."

Bob, who was now retitled Man Whore Number 1, just looked over at Elena, who was very much still holding back bile and on her knees, and gave her an expectant glance from the corner of his eyes. "Sorry, man. I was just taking out the trash." And with that he was gone.

_Ouch, _she thought. _That almost hurt more than the time my fish died when I was six._

She looked down at herself and then mentally sighed when she realized she could finally turn around and up-chuck the remains of her little adventure with the Man Whore. It also seemed like she managed to get rid of her earlier lunch with Damon and then half her body weight in syrupy alcohol. She was almost thankful for that. It was weighing her down anyway.

Her knees were scuffed up and slightly bleeding by the time she stood up, the money falling from her leg and landing on the road. She was going to leave it there. Maybe it would make some Hobo happy tonight. At least she would make someone pleased for once in her life.

The leather of her top slid back over her breasts and she prayed it would stay that way until she changed for bed tonight. She had had enough excitement until she was ninety. Her purse had been tossed to the ground as she had been, rudely, pushed against the wall just a couple of minutes ago. It was a shame he didn't have the stamina to last longer. Maybe then she would have bit him while the opportunity was still plausible.

Bending over to get the purse was actually the hard part of the night. She was still a little tipsy. After a while she just gave up and slid against the wall so she could just sit next to the bag in question. There were a lot of things in the purse but she found her phone quickly.

"Shit," She cursed. It was later then she thought. The little numbers on the mobile seemed to mock her. It read 3:00 A.M, but surly that was wrong. She couldn't have stayed that long. Damon really didn't ask that much of her. All he really wanted was for her to be at the Boarding House before 1:00 in the morning and to call before she crashed and burned.

Remorse bubbled in her chest. She couldn't even follow those simple rules? What was wrong with her? She hadn't even done this much feeling in a long time. She seemed to be in a whole turmoil of emotions right now.

Well, she couldn't just sit here and ponder about how much Damon probably hated her in this moment. There had been a lot of those types of instants. She tried to push back the memories but they came towards the surface anyway.

"_Let me get this straight." Damon said, pacing in front of her and holding the bridge of his nose like he had a headache. "You made a bet with some random chick that if she could drink you under the table, then she could sleep with me? Are you temporarily insane or has it always been that way? If I won't even sleep with you then why in the hell would I sleep with her? I don't even know her!"_

_Elena frowned. She had meant for this to be a fun little game; a joke. But things were far from funny. Damon looked like he wanted to rip her heart out._

"_Well, excuse me." She snorted with an absent wave of her hand. "Last time I checked you were willing to screw anything with long legs and boobs. Where did that Damon go? Now, your about as fun as my grandma. And she's dead."_

"_That Damon left when he started watching out for your drunken little ass." He pointed an accusing finger in her direction. "And instead of having time for himself, he now has to follow Little Miss Fast and Furious around in case she starts choking on her own vomit."_

_She raised an eyebrow delicately. The drink in her lap swirled around the elaborate glass. "Wow, seems like you practiced that little speech. And you're not as cute when you're mad."_

_Damon clapped his hands suddenly. "And that is what I don't get. A couple of months ago you couldn't even look in my direction without feeling unfaithful to Stefan. And now you have made it your life's work to get me in bed with you. I am almost terrified for my life. Are you planning to roofie me or something? This is sure not the Elena I feel in love with. I don't even know you anymore."_

_His name still made her cringe inwardly. She didn't want to talk about that right now. Maybe she didn't want to talk about it ever. But it still didn't go unnoticed by Elena that he had no problem saying he loved her. They crossed that bridge a long time ago._

"_People change, Damon." She shrugged. "I don't know what else to tell you."_

_There was pure hatred in his cobalt eyes and he immediately stopped walking, looking at her like she was some foreign creature. She wasn't sure if he was mad at her words, her personally or both. She was betting on the latter._

"_You're kidding, right? Please, just tell me you're kidding and maybe I won't walk over there and strangle you. Not even you can possibly believe that this change in behavior is because people transform for no apparent reason."_

_Elena sighed. They had been through this before. "You've changed and you don't see me yelling at you."_

_Damon started wandering again, running his hands through his already tousled hair. He looked like he hadn't slept in days. "That's because I'm not snorting drugs and drinking my weight in alcohol. And I'm sure as hell not fucking random people…like the mailman!"_

_She pouted. That wasn't fair. It had only been one time. She tried to get a word in but he was on a roll now._

"_And I don't even get how saving your ass every night is changing for the worse, Elena. I don't think you understand how dangerous you are to yourself. You can die! And the Elena I thought I knew would never put up with just dying."_

_She gripped her cup in a vice like hold and tossed the dregs back. Neither of them was drunk enough for this conversation. Maybe she just had to give him what he wanted the most; the truth. "Okay, fine. Maybe I wasn't the one thing that changed. This whole world changed, Damon. Things got scarier and darker and Stefen is gone. He's gone and he won't be coming back in the next 10 years." To her utter disbelief, she found that her eyes had fogged over. And now was not the time for crying like a two year old. "And you want to know the reason I treat myself like trash? It's because that is what my life is now! It's just trash and you know it. I think I almost miss the blood thirsty and crazy vampires. They gave me something to do, something to live for. And now my life is nothing but getting stoned and seeing how many drinks I can consume before passing out." She clenched her jaw and then smoothed over her dress, something she always did when she got nervous. Her voice came out quieter this time. "And I hate it. I just don't know how to stop."_

As Elena shook herself out of that horrible memory, she couldn't help but also remember how Damon seemed to understand her better after that. She also noticed that she was still shaking in the corner of an ally. People came and went through the back door to the club. They glimpsed at her through hooded and almost understanding eyes. She obviously looked like she had just been ditched by some prick with a bigger agenda that didn't have her in the future. And that was fine. She didn't need their pity (she didn't need anyone's pity) but it almost felt nice to know that maybe someone somewhere had just been put through a similar situation. Her liking that was just a little bit sick and twisted.

The only way to get rid of those looks was to get up and start putting a plan in motion. Damon could have been asleep right now, finally just forgetting about her and where she was, but she wouldn't bet on it, or he could still be waiting by his phone, hoping she called soon. There was really only one way to find out and test how faithful Damon really was. And tonight she actually hoped the answer was: Very faithful.

She looked at her phone, sending a silent prayer to whoever was listening, that Damon picked up. He if didn't then she was either stuck walking, which would take her about two hours or more, or she would have to hitchhike with some loser who might try to rape her.

Her hand shook as she looked at her contacts. Damon's number was under her emergency list. What sane person wouldn't have a vampire's number in their phone? The phone rang once, twice, three times before someone picked up.

"Hello?" The voice was very sleep induced and groggy. But there was no doubt in her mind. It was Damon!

"Oh, thank God." Her voice seemed to carry in the wind, bouncing off the walls and reverberating back to her ears. She got some very curious looks from onlookers trying to get into the building. "You have no idea how happy I am to hear your voice."

"Elena?" Damon sounded confused. "What the hell? Do you even know how early it is? It's like three in the morning! I've been waiting for you to call for hours."

Oh, so he was faithful. She should have come home earlier.

"You could have called me." She whispered in a calm voice, trying to calm him before he really started yelling at the top of his lungs.

He sighed and she imagined he was rubbing his temples in displeasure. "I didn't want to pry. I know how you get when I try to push you to so something-" He stopped, mid-thought. "Are you okay? Did something bad happen? Please, tell me you didn't throw up on a bartender again. You're not in jail, are you?"

Elena grimaced. She really was bad. "No. I just- I just had a rough night. Can you please pick me up? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to keep you up." She shut up before she could say anything more. She had never apologized to Damon so out-front before. He seemed as stunned as she was.

He answered almost without any hesitation. "Yeah, I'll be ready in about fifteen minutes. Do you think you can hang on until I get there?"

She looked at the sky. The full moon hung heavy in the air, looking positively sinister. Tyler would be out and about right now. Or was he finally in bed after a long night of prowling around in the woods? She really did hope he was alright. Klause had disturbed everyone she cared about. No one was really safe. Not even now.

She quivered. "Yes. Just please hurry. I don't feel good." And she didn't realize how true those words were before she said them. She felt like her insides were melting, slowly traveling up towards her throat until she choked on all her inhibitions. This is what it felt like to be outside of your body; to feel like you didn't know what you had become. It made her feel physically and emotionally exhausted.

"Do you want me to bring a garbage can or something? I really don't want you yakking all over my car."

If she wasn't so dizzy all of the sudden then she would have rolled her eyes. She felt that if she did that now, then they would have rolled in the back of her head without any consultant of hers. That wouldn't have been a problem on a normal night. But this wasn't a normal night and she was sure that she wouldn't be able to get her pupils to reappear.

"Maybe you should." The odds of her throwing up right now were slim but it was better to be safe than sorry. She knew how precious that car was to Damon. In plus, she would probably have to clean it up if she did vomit all in the passenger seat.

"Alright, I'm on my way. Just go wait in the parking lot and try not to die in that short amount of time." He hung up.

The cell was thrown back in her bag and she looked up, hiking the purse higher on her shoulder like it was life or death. Maybe it was. She _did _have a can of pepper spray in there. The walk over to the parking lot seemed longer than ever, even though it was literally just right around the corner.

Those damn stilettoes didn't make it any easier either. She hurriedly plopped down on her butt again and yanked them off. The cold air felt good on her aching, blistering feet and she breathed a sigh of release. That was much better. Now, she just needed to hope that she wouldn't step on any broken glass. Broken glass outside of a trashy bar? Nope. Never heard of it.

She stood with one shoe in each hand. She probably had flashed anyone who was watching her body close enough. And that was about anyone with a penis outside of the vicinity. Apparently she was the free show of the morning.

The impulse to stick out her tongue was strong but she managed to repress it. She just needed to worry about making it to the parking lot without letting the stares of random drunks bother her. It sure seemed a hell of a lot easier without her incommodious shoes getting in the way. She teetered and tottered along but she made it their without any hiccups. It was officially the first success of the night. It was better than last night's victory, which was so filthy and crude that she didn't even dare share it, even if it was in the safe confines of her mind. The thought of accomplishing something put a small smile on her face. It felt good.

The curb to the crammed lot became her new best acquaintance as she sat and rubbed along her feet with maladroit fingers. God, she hated those shoes. She stared at them long and hard before picking them up and chucking them across the road. No one would miss them. Well, except Caroline. She was the one who had lent them to Elena in the first place. But she doubted that Caroline would mind. She had her own qualms and complications to deal with just like Elena did.

Was Caroline even alright? Elena hadn't really kept in touch with any of her friends. She was too busy living the fast life with the many partygoers of Mystic Falls. All she really knew about _one_ of her friends was that she spent most her time with her little brother, Jeremy. Elena lived at the Boarding House, but before she did the offer was given to both her and Jer. She had accepted but Jeremy? No, he said he would just stay at Bonnie's. The house that they had once shared together ever since birth was now abandoned and left for foreclosure. She still had mixed feelings about that piece of information.

"That's the first thing I'm going to do tomorrow," she mumbled to herself. "I am going to call all of my friends and catch up with them. Hopefully they still don't hate me." She wouldn't put her money on anything. Last time she had checked Bonnie, Caroline, Matt and Tyler wanted nothing to do with her at the moment. They were pretty pissed that their friend Elena Gilbert had gone straight off the deep end.

"We don't even recognize you anymore, Elena. Hell, you don't even recognize yourself." Matt's words seemed to ricochet throughout her brain.

There had to be some way to show that she still loved them. Maybe she would display how she could change. But it was easier said than done. Quitting cold turkey was hard.

It wouldn't be so much that she would miss the clubbing and partying, per se. It would be like she had lost some part of her; the part of her that besought the heady sensation of not giving a shit. She was just going to miss the awareness. But it was going to be worth it. It just had to be.

In between Elena massaging her toes and trying to find the Big Dipper in the moonlighted sky, she heard the distant rumbling of an expensive car.

"Damon must really have broken a couple hundred traffic laws to get here. It's only been about ten minutes." Elena pushed herself off the sidewalk, even though her feet told her to plant it again, and tiptoed across the parking lot to where the entrance was, her purse and windswept hair trailing behind her.

The fiery roar of Damon's care almost deafened her as it turned into the mouth of the parking lot. It stopped immediately when Elena was spotted. The person occupying the car did _not_ look amused. Before Damon could change his mind or run her over, she threw herself into the passenger seat where a garbage can was blindly thrown at her.

"Wow," she tried a useless attempt at a smile. "You sure did come fast." The worn leather of the seats pressed into her cold back and the door was shut quickly to make sure no more cold air snuck its way in. Pretty soon and she was going to freeze to death. "So…what have you been up to tonight?"

Fire momentarily blazed in those blue eyes, but soon after he just rolled them. It was obvious he was going for the: I'm-so-mad-at-you-if-I-speak-I-will-spite lava- silent treatment.

Wheel turning rapidly, the car swerved around at supersonic speed, causing her to hold on the dashboard for dear life. This was the kind of car a vampire owned; one that could almost go as fast as the damn vampire itself. Even the garbage bag that Damon had thrown at her seemed appealing. Her protesting stomach churned as the car made rapid fire stops and turns, tossing her around in her seat. She could have driven more cautiously…and she was drunk! The life outside of the window blurred by in a never ending mosaic, colors meshing together in blinding balls of light, her whirling mind working overtime to figure out that they had just passed a coffee house. It didn't seem possible that someone could drive so fast without dying, but, even though the car jerked and jostled inside, the vehicle seemed to glide across the asphalt, creating the illusion that they were floating rather than crash testing a new car. And she could have sworn that they just ran a red light a couple feet back.

Now she was getting a little anxious. Surly he wouldn't let this car crash with her in it, but if it did then he could just walk away. Actually, the car lurching around like this reminded her a lot of the car crash that killed her pare-

"Damon, slow down." He didn't show any sign of hearing her, his blue eyes still on the blackness ahead. "Damon, I mean it. If you don't slow down then I swear to God that I will throw myself out the door."

He looked at her then, just a quick glance out of the corner of his eye, but at least it was something. Telling that she was dead serious- she would do anything in her intoxicated state- he slowed the car down about ten miles, and she let out a sigh of relief. The danger was over…for now.

"Where are your shoes?"

Elena almost smirked, happy that he was talking again even if it was a growl of irritation. "You mean those death traps on heels? They hurt so I threw them in the bushes. But don't tell Caroline." She waggled a finger in his direction and stage whispered. "I don't think she would be too happy."

The corners of his lips seemed to slightly turn up, but when she could double check to see if they really had, it was still set in a cold, hard line.

"Damon?" The voice trembled out an exhale, slightly breaking and sounding awfully slurred. Then she realized that it was hers. "Do you hate me?

"No."

"Do you love me?" The answer was painfully obvious.

"Yes. You know I do."

"Why? Why don't you go find a nice girl who can love you back and want to be with you for who you are?"

"Because not everyone can handle my shit, Elena. And not everyone can handle your shit. It's just the way things are."

"Why won't you sleep with me?" She blurted after a moment's hesitation. "Is there something wrong with me? Do you not want me?"

He carefully avoided the question. "Well, aren't you a bucket load of questions this, well, its morning now."

But she wasn't going to let this one slide. "You didn't answer my question. I may be drunk, but I am not an idiot, Damon."

"Can't we just cut the interrogations?"

"No. You tell me before I do something I'll really regret in the morning."

The heat was switched off and fingers were drummed against the steering wheel, setting the atmosphere in an edgy state. "Because it's not the right thing to do for the first question, no to the second question, and the last question I am not even going to answer. I think it's pretty clear to everyone how much I want you."

"Then why not take me? If you have wanted me for so long then why not just jump at the opportunity? We never have to talk about it after. I swear."

If she couldn't have gotten him to talk before, now the words just poured out. "Have you ever stopped to think that maybe I just don't want your body? Maybe I want your mind, too. What if I want to talk about it after? What if I want to get to know you? To love you more that I already do?" One of the cords in Damon's neck twitched, the carotid artery visible under heated skin and sleep deprivation. "You just don't get it, Elena. This whole thing in just so screwed up that we don't even know where we're going anymore."

_I'm trying to talk here! Just hear me out, please! Just tell him what he really needs to know. You'll feel better, I promise. _A nagging voice in the gloomy crooks of her mind seemed to beg for her undivided attention and the urge to cover her ears was tough and hard not to give into. It felt like there was a freaking Dr. Phil rerun in her head, constantly telling her what was right and what was wrong. Where was this voice when she was sexing it up with that guy in the ally? Had it really just chosen now to scold her in this way?

"Is it my fault, Damon? Am I the reason Klause took Stefan?"

"You know what's weird?" Damon ran a haggard hand over his face. "You never wanted to talk about this before. Is it because you're drunk or something? Every time I've asked you to explain, you just brushed it off like it was nothing."

"I'm talking about it right now. It just seems like your being the unreasonable one."

Damon looked at her again as the town continued to pass by in a rushed blur. He murmured something that sounded strangely like, "This is ridiculous."

At least they were on the same page. "Well, can we talk about it now…before you fall asleep at the wheel?"

He huffed out a breath and the car slowed down, nearing a stop sign. "Fine, Elena. Why don't you humor me some? I bet it would do us both some good. Why do you, pray tell, insist on making my life so much damn harder? I'm not a baby sitter, you know."

"I know, I know. I just- uh- I don't know. When Stefan left…it was just like there was nothing in this world worth living for anymore."

A hurt look flittered across Damon's handsome face, making him look even wearier than you already was. "Nothing?"

Elena was trying to be brutally honest right now. Her words were willing to pour out faster than the tequila that was poured out of its mixer earlier that night. "Almost nothing. And then I saw you and of course you were as sad as I was. It would have been selfish of me to just leave. And so I stayed with you, with this world. But in order to stay sane I just- I don't know, I guess I went kind of crazy."

"Yeah, 'kind of crazy' doesn't even begin to cover it. I know it may have been hard to comprehend how many days you have spent puking in my toilet altogether, but as you well know, I am very understanding."

"And this is coming from the 168 year old vampire with brother issues? Yup, I would say you're about the most understanding person I know."

"Hey, time is knowledge, kid. I'm like a fine wine." He winked at her. "I only get better with age."

Despite her better judgment, she laughed. It was a deep and throaty sound that left her throat raw, filling the warm car with the melody. She hadn't laughed like that in forever. It felt good, it felt great. "Oh God, Damon, that was like the oldest one in the book. Please, for the sake of my well-being, just never say that again."

Damon smirked at her in return and put the car in drive when the light turned green again. "You haven't laughed like that in a long time. Why now?"

The laugh died in her throat. She viewed Damon with a quick turn of her head. "You make me happy. Is that such a crime?" Suddenly, her cheeks felt warm, too warm. Was she…blushing? Oh, wow. It was a whole day for things she hadn't done in a while. "It's weird to think that at one time I hated your immature man-child guts and now…?"

The atmosphere got suddenly quiet, fast. Even Damon was silent, which was a rare thing to behold. The ever hyperactive vampire always had something inappropriate to say, no matter what the situation held.

"And now what?" Elena could barely even hear his voice over the roar of the motor and numerous other sounds that made its way through the car doors from the outside world.

"And now I guess I just don't hate you. I told you before that I like you just the way you are." That night was still a tender subject that hadn't really been explained in much detail. For now it was just a sweet secret between them, not to be clarified to others who may be curious.

There was a clandestine smile at the edge of Damon's lips. "Well, that's good because I don't hate you either."

"Obviously," Elena exclaimed, "otherwise you wouldn't have put up with my delinquent crap. You may not have noticed it, Damon, but you have gone completely soft on me."

A whirlwind of emotions seemed to be going through his mind; one thought swirling into another. There was a raw sentiment in his voice when he spoke next. "And don't I know it. A year and a half ago I was happily ripping out pretty girls throats and now I think I am even queasy at the sight of blood."

Elena's hand shot up to her throat, surprise plainly evident on her face, lips screwed up in a grimace. "Seriously? Is that even possible."

"No, of course not. I was just agreeing with you that I am now easygoing and spineless. No thanks to you, obviously."

Elena relaxed into her seat again. Damon nauseous at the sight of blood? Now that was ludicrous. "Maybe we should stop talking. You're starting to make sense, and that is something we cannot have."

"I know. An ancient monster that happens to be older than dirt making some kind of sense? Now, there is something crazy for the scrapbook." He suddenly stopped, looking at her curiously with wonder in his liquid eyes.

Before she could ask what he was gawking at, he opened his mouth. "Where the hell did you get those…are those even really clothes?"

If she had blushed before, now her face was just on fire. She struggled to sound indifferent. "Oh, these things? I just – uh…found them."

Damon narrowed his eyes, lips puckering out in the world's best male pout. His expression said it all. He clearly did not believe her. "Wow, a deceiver. Never thought you would roll that way. If I remember properly you said a few months back that you weren't going to lie to me any longer."

She bit her lip until she tasted a coopery tang in the back of her throat. "You really want to know where I got them? The answer may horrify and shock you."

"Try me. I've had to bath my father before. Nothing can faze me now." Damon smiled, reveling killer white teeth, fangs completely absent, but just with that smirk you could tell that something wicked could appear at any point in time.

"Alright, but just remember you asked for it." She took a big breath. This was awkward. Not awkward for her, but surly for someone she cared deeply about. "I found them in the very back of Jeremy's closet."

Damon's face screwed up and bunched his eyebrows together, his perfectly adorable nose scrunching up. "Your brothers a hooker?"

Brown eyes were rolled and she reached across the seats to punch his arm. "No, you idiot. They probably belonged to some girl he brought home before he was with Bonnie."

"What the hell did she go home in then? She couldn't possibly have walked home naked."

She shivered. "Ew."

"You were the one who took the clothes. So it's really you who is the pervert here. Interesting. Think of all the nasty things you could have contracted just by looking at these things. You're taking a bath when we get home."

"You're not very understanding, Damon. That was never one of your good traits." She looked down at her attire. She did feel pretty hoe-ish.

"So what _is_ one of my good traits?"

"Definitely not the ability to know when to shut up, that's for sure," She snickered into the palm of her hand. "Now that is something I want to see happen; you not having some smart-ass thing to talk about every five seconds."

Damon shrugged his compact shoulders. "Can't argue with you on that one. You don't even know how many times I got slapped as a kid because I wouldn't shut up."

An amusing chortle sounded in the back of Elena's throat. "I can almost imagine." After another deep laugh from Damon, she suddenly sobered up. He looked at her inquisitively with the beginnings of frustration under black brows.

"You weren't treated very well as a kid, were you." It was not a question on Elena's part. She knew just by the way Damon's whole physique tensed up and the way he did not have some snarky comment to snap back, that she was right. She was usually right when it came to Damon. Sure, she hadn't know him that long, maybe a year and a half tops, but sometimes Damon was as much of an open book as she was.

Long, pale fingers tightened around the hard exterior of the steering wheel and Elena wondered if she had pushed and assumed too much, reading into something that was better left alone. A muscle in Damon's jaw twitched and she saw him swallow hard, breathing in a big amount of air he didn't need through his nose, the hollow in the base of his throat growing deeper.

His full lips opened after a moment later. "People get treated like crap all the time, Elena. Why should I be an exception?"

Elena nodded like those words should have explained it all. Actually, she didn't respond because she was afraid of knowing what Damon was thinking. She figured that his mind was tense and cloudy like hers was often times, and she did not need any more of _that_ in her life. She was barely holding on as it was and she figured that if anything remotely depressing came crashing down on her, then she would drop down where she was from pure exhaustion.

After deciding that maybe sometimes Damon needed someone to detox to, and he had listened to all of her emotional, self-pity baggage so maybe he deserved this, she managed to pry even more than she already had.

"Sometimes Stefan used to talk about it." She ignored the silent pang in her painfully beating heart at his mention. "About you as a kid. You used to get in trouble a lot. And you weren't always the nicest person…but you loved easily. And I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Perhaps it's both." She said the last part mostly to herself. Loving too easily was both a gift and a curse. Loving to easily meant falling for Katherine. Loving to easily meant loving her. But maybe that wasn't 'loving to easily.' After Katherine it seemed like Damon had stopped loving everyone, even his little brother. And then Elena had come along and it had changed everything.

Damon Salvatore _used_ to be an easy lover. But nothing about loving Elena was easy. Nothing about loving _anyone _was easy.

"Stefan also talked about other stuff. Embarrassing stuff." Elena tried to keep a straight face. This mood was making her weary. They needed to brighten it up a bit.

Damon didn't flinch or even blink. But she could tell that his interest had peaked to a new high. "What kind of embarrassing stuff?"

Bingo. She was always right when it came to Damon.

The right side of her mouth twitched, almost breaking into a grin. "Oh, you know. The usual."

Damon nodded his head silently as Elena sat as still as she could, keeping her façade in check. Anytime now and he would break.

The world outside continued to fly by quickly, all sorts of objects and lights blending into one mesh of blinding colors. It was a shocking contrast to the dark sky that loomed all around it. The moon still hung unbothered, creating the only natural light on the highway for miles. The gentle sway of the car and the warm, heady atmosphere lulled her quietly. She found it harder to keep her eyes open, struggling to stay awake until she was in a comfy bed, even though all she wanted to do was go to sleep for the next thousand years or so. Right when her head was nodding frontwards and her eyes were ultimately closing for good was the time Damon spoke up again.

"So, are we talking like really embarrassing or just moderately embarrassing? I'm kind of on a need to know basis, now. It's not nice to tease."

There was a double meaning in those words, she swore. And she didn't miss the way his eyes lingered on the long expanse of her leg, like he was just _now_ realizing she was barely wearing anything.

Elena inattentively brought an elfin hand to her face, checking the perfect oval nails like she didn't give a shit that he was begging. She very much did give a shit, though. It wasn't just every day that you got Damon to beg for something.

"He didn't say anything about when I was 14, did he?" Damon tapped his forefinger against his seat. Maybe he thought it would get her to talk faster.

"It's really not nice to gossip, Damon. People can get hurt. This is how rumors start."

Damon turned to stare at her, full frontal, ocean blue eyes meeting melted chocolate ones. "What the hell are you…What are you playing at? It isn't gossiping if it's about me!"

"Wow," Elena clucked her tongue like a disapproving parent, "You sound just like Caroline. She must have rubbed off on you when she was busy being your meals-on-wheels. Well, it happens to the best of us."

He looked at her for a second, really looked at her, before his eyes seemed to light up unexpectedly. "Oh, I get it. A drunk Elena is an Elena that doesn't know when to shut up. Infect, you probably made up the whole thing about Stefan spilling his guts about me. So, go ahead. I called your bluff."

Elena scrunched up her eyebrows until they were in a tight knot. "So, you mean it's not true when Stefan said that you lost your virginity when you were 13. That's a bit young, don't you think?"

From the corner of her prolonged gaze, she could see Damon's eyes go round, looking in danger of stopping the car where it was and kicking her out while he still had the chance, even though she could clearly see the lights to the boarding house through the windshield.

"I don't know where he could have gotten such an idea…Maybe he was drunk or something."

Elena scoffed because she knew that Stefan didn't get drunk. Well, he didn't _use _to drink. She wasn't so sure about now. Yeah, maybe he got drunk on blood, but that was a much – bloodier- tale to tell. She didn't really want to get into much detail over that.

"He also said that you have a tattoo on your-"

"Wow, that's enough show and tell for tonight." He cut into her speech as the car came to a cool, gliding stop outside of the steps of the mansion.

The night seemed clearer somehow, especially in the light that the posts on the outside of the streets gave off. It made the boarding house seem bigger and unfamiliar. It also made her feel unwelcome and reminded her unfaithfully that she was just a tiny being in this remarkably big world. It _made _her not want to be here because she did not belong here.

_Why am I here, Elena? Think very hard but don't hurt yourself. You need to know why you're doing this to yourself. _The voice that had pestered her earlier seemed to slip by unnoticed in between her ears. The ringing sensation of it caused her to falter in her step on the stairs and Damon looked at her curiously from the very edges of his peripheral vision.

Why wasn't she with Jeremy? Didn't he need his big sister? Did he not love her anymore? Did no one love her?

The shockingly cold sting of a frigid doorknob cut through her thoughts selfishly. Right away, she was back with Damon on the porch of the Salvatore Mansion. Little dots appeared in her line of sight. The world seemed to do a slow tilt on its axis, even though she stood perfectly still under the moons light.

"Damon," her voice was tired, weary from too many new experienced in one continues day, "I need to call Jeremy."

Damon stood unyielding beside her, his hand reaching instinctively towards her like she was about to lose consciousness. "Why don't you get some sleep, 'Lena? Jeremy is asleep right now. Call him tomorrow."

Elena tossed her head back and forth slowly, feeling like she was coming down from a major high. She desperately needed to say something to her brother. She just needed to find out what that something _was_. Maybe she would sleep better tonight knowing that Jeremy didn't hate her like everyone else seemed to.

"No, Damon. I need to talk to him…now."

He could probably see the stubborn set in her jaw and that fire in her eyes that said that under no circumstances was she going to bed until she talked to Jeremy first. He looked at her, and then the door, and opened it with one swift movement from his slim wrist.

The warm air in the building chased away the frosty exterior of her body and she managed to shiver involuntarily. She couldn't wait to get into her pajamas and sleep until the afternoon.

She silently closed the door behind her and slid her back down the length of it until she was sitting propped against the wood. In a very un-ladylike gesture, especially when said 'lady' wasn't wearing any underwear, Elena spread her legs out before her and glanced for a fraction of a second at her blistered feet. Her purse lay next to her and with nimble fingers, she slowly slid her cell out of its hiding place.

She palmed the tiny object in her hand before swiftly dialing Jeremy's cell number. Pressing it closely to her ear, she noticed that Damon had disappeared from sight. He had probably gone upstairs and to bed again, having been interrupted the first time he tried to.

The phone deftly buzzed against her chilled skin about two times before she heard Jeremy's deep voice through the other end. She was about to speak into it and explain how sorry she was for being such a bitch, when she realized with a sick sort of realization that this was just his voice mail. Of course Jeremy was going to be sleeping right now. Any well-balanced person _would_ be sleeping at this time of the morning.

Hot tears of frustration flooded the corners of her eyes before she spoke with a trembling voice at the beep.

"Hey, Jeremy," she took a shaky breath and tried to calm herself. "I know I haven't talked to you in a while - haven't really talked to anyone in a while -but…" Her voice got caught in the back of her throat and she tried to clear it to no avail.

"But I just wanted to let you know that I -uh…I really love you. I know that I haven't been there when I should have been and you must think I'm a pretty shitty big sister but…I guess I just needed to tell you that I do love you. And you may not want to talk to me ever again, so I guess you don't have to call me back."

She blew out an unsatisfied breath between clenched teeth and clucked her tongue. "But if you want to do me a favor…which you probably don't, then could you tell Bonnie that I love her, too? And that I miss both of you?"

As the phone beeped again, signaling that her freaking time was up and potentially wasted, she clicked the off button on her phone and just looked at it awhile. It mocked her. It was shiny and new and not damaged in any way possible. Not like she was.

And then she chucked it across the dimly lit room, watching it sail until it shattered a vase of dried roses and cause the piercing sound of shattered glass and dripping water to cloud the house. The scream that was desperately waiting for release in the back of her throat was savagely torn free of its confines.

The shriek belonged to a young person; a girl. It belonged to a young person that had lived through too much and seen ugly and fucked up things in that short expanse of time. She had seen blood, and people killed and torn apart, and things destroyed. She had seen people have their lives destroyed right from under their noses. She had stabbed 'mythical' creatures and watched people close to her die and half-die and then come back to life. She discovered that her best friend was a witch, her other friend was a werewolf, and another one of her best friends was a vampire. Her vampire lover was gone and she was stuck with his deranged brother as her only company. She had become an emotional wreck and screwed over more people then she could count. She had been force-fed blood and then stood by as her real father, the one who created her, gave up his own life just so she would not be turned into the one thing he loathed. She had watched her aunt get scarified on an altar of blood and she had watched her real mother, the one who actually gave birth to her, commit vampire suicide.

And the worst one yet was that she had just now chosen to acknowledge all of this.

All of the memories came rushing in at once, swirling and pouring into her body until she felt full up. Maybe it was because of all the alcohol she had consumed or maybe it was all of the emotions she had felt tonight (first she was depressed and then she was mad, then sad, then happy for some moments and now she was just damaged) but she somehow knew that it was just the right time for all her hauntings to come through to her.

Nothing had triggered her to catch up with her past except for the fact that it was simply _time_. It was time to face the music, to get her newsflash on what was causing her to live this way.

_And this is it. You came to grips on what you are. Now…what are you going to do about it?_

Elena just stood there in the hallway of this enormous house, panting. If anyone were to be watching her right now then they surly would have been mesmerized. People would have been able to see the different emotions that had passed over her eyes and they would have been able to catch an ounce of what she had been through these past two years. Her face was an open book that had just, until recently, been closed.

After a few more moments of standing there and absently watching the clear water from the broken glass of roses trickle its way over to her, her feet numbly padded over to her phone. It sadly sat under a ray of destruction. Ever so gently, she cradled it in her arms. She really didn't mean to. She really didn't mean to damage things so easily and take them in vain. Her intentions weren't to scratch her new, shiny phone.

Elena didn't know why this was suddenly so important, why her phones well-being was suddenly so significant to her. It still didn't stop her from gingerly putting it back into her bag. If it was in there then she would not be tempted to do anything bad to it anymore. Her phone had been of great use to her. She would not be so dirty to it anymore.

Elena looked around, wiping softly at her nose and raw eyes before she made her way out of the hallway and into the grand living room. There she stopped and dropped her bag with a very soft _thud_.

The lights weren't on and the only beam that shown its way through the dark area was that of the glowing, crackling fire and the moon against the draperies.

The room reminded her of weird, random things. Like the first time she met Damon, and was so awed by something so seemingly perfect and yet arrogant. Or the time Stefan had stood here with her and she had said she wanted him for what he was, not for what he pretended to be.

She was reminded of the times she found out that Damon wore glasses because, even though he was a vampire, he still had some poor eyesight. She didn't get how this was possible. Wasn't the whole point of being a super-human having superb eyesight?

She found out that Damon had a scar on the inside of his right thigh from when he was fifteen and attached by their neighbors rabid dog. He had the smallest of tattoos on the dip of his lower back, just barely hidden under his pants. It almost resembled Stefan's in some places, save for a few minor changes. Elena always wondered why if Damon had seemingly hated Stefan so much back then why he had gotten a marking so close to his brothers.

Coincidence? Probably not.

She remembered being told by Damon that he had been cut by accident at the base of his throat. And sure enough when Elena had looked closely at his neck the next day she had seen the faintest of a white line in the dip at the hallow of his throat when he took a breath in.

Elena's own hand felt to her neck as she recalled these things. She remembered feeling sorry for him because to be cut there should have really hurt.

It was in that couch only a couple of feet away that she had traced the winding veins in Stefan's arms and counted each speckle of brown in his green eyes.

She reminisced there being a time when she spent a couple days studying the two Salvatore brothers as closely as possible. She had never met such interesting and beautiful men before, even though she would have liked to convince herself that she had.

Her observations included noting how Damon wasn't very tall even though he was at a human age – around twenty-three- where he was done growing. And he seemed lither than his brother, more compact. His muscles, which were still there under smooth skin, weren't as admittedly big as his little brothers. When his hair grew out, and it did grow just like a normal persons should, it curled around the edges of his ears. There were small dimples around the edges his mouth when he grimaced or smiled and sometimes his striking blue eyes were dark one day and then light the other. He had a humor that most happy people wouldn't find very amusing but if he laughed, a real laugh coming deep from within the stomach, you couldn't help but smile and laugh along.

And those were just the innocent details she had described. If she wanted to get really deep on Damon and describe even the really dirty things she had sometimes seen, whether it was by pure accident or not, then it would have included something's she wasn't so proud of.

If she wanted to get technical on Damon then she would have described the intimate details, like how his belly button pushed in instead of outward and under that marking was a dark trail of hair that disappeared into equally dark pants. She would have notified that after she had accidently heard him in bed with Andie that his voice got deeper out of lust. When he was even remotely aroused, and she had seen fair encounters with that when she was being skanky night after night when Stefan had left, his cheeks flushed with blood that was recently consumed and his eyes glazed over, becoming more black than blue.

There was even a really embarrassing moment one night a couple of weeks after Stefan had gone up and skipped town when she had walked in on Damon taking a shower. Sure, they were close like brother and sister and it almost seemed stupid to be embarrassed by being naked (almost) but she couldn't help but feel horrible for catching him in the act of being naked when he was trying to prevent her from that in the first place. And the worst part was that she had never seen a full grown man without anything on before. Any normally functioning female with hormones would have been a little curious, too.

Sure, she had seen Stefan naked before…but he was only seventeen. And Damon was six years older than that.

Elena realized that she was only thinking of one certain Salvatore, and it definitely wasn't Stefan. She had to remind herself that she may have been physically interested and attracted to Damon, and she did respect him enough, but that didn't mean anything at all.

Nudging her purse out of her path, she only lingered a couple of seconds longer before walking over to one of the many staircases the house had to offer and plugging along up the long expanse, the guardrail the only thing that insured her that she would not fall backwards. That sure would be a dumb way to end things after all the crap she had been through.

The walk up the stairs seemed even longer than before and she wondered if her life was suddenly being played in slow motion.

As she made her way up to the top, she noticed that her feet hadn't stopped at Stefan's door like they usually would have. Maybe she was just torturing herself by sleeping in there every night. At least that was what Damon had said. And maybe that was why her feet had loitered outside of Damon's door. She didn't want to sleep alone with empty promises and unspoken words tonight of all nights.

Elena shifted her feet back and forth before tapping on the oak of Damon's door with her tiny knuckles. When she waited a moment and there was no tell-tale sign that Damon was even in there, she pushed the door open and was faced with his humongous bed. She would probably never get why one could need such a big thing to sleep on. It wasn't like he was a bazillion pounds or something. He couldn't have been more than 5'8 and a mere 155 pounds.

Probably hearing her enter, Damon came around from the corner from his bathroom; glasses perched on his nose, making him look oddly smart in this lighting.

He froze in her line of sight, waiting for her to say something…anything at all.

"I broke a vase," she deadpanned.

"Why?"

The stinging in the corner of her tear ducts seemed to return again. "Because it's what I do. I break things."

Damon's gaze seemed to be incredulous. "You don't break things. You just like to think you do. There's a difference. I would know."

A flood seemed to erupt deep within her, tears leaking between sore eyes, and somehow she managed to stumble her sorry self into his arms before she fell to the ground in a messy heap.

It felt good to hold on to something just because she needed to. Damon smelt like Stefan and she didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. All she did know is that he returned the embrace, something she was immensely grateful for. She didn't know if she could handle more rejection in her mind.

She pressed her nose further into his warm neck as pitiful excuses for sobs escaped her throat. She was trying to say how sorry she was for this – for everything- but she couldn't get the words to pass through her bumbling mouth.

The fact that she was allowing Damon to touch her, and it wasn't even remotely sexual, was not lost on her. She was going to allow someone to touch her this one time while she was falling apart at the seams because she needed to. It felt good – it felt great- to have someone care for her in this way. She missed this. This was the thing she really craved.

Pressing her mouth against the hollow of throat caused Damon to tense up noticeably in her arms. She wasn't trying to start anything, really. She was just trying to stop the strangled cries from escaping her.

But this just made her cry harder. She was always using people. Right now she was using Damon to stop her wretched bawling.

When it seemed like hours had passed by, and Damon finally noticed that he was allowed to touch her once again, so he stroked her hair with tender strokes, her cries had turned just into little nose sniffles. Her eyes felt droopy and apprehensive, like they didn't trust her to do to bed for some reason, and she just pushed herself further into Damon's body, trying not to feel how nicely they molded together at the edges.

His voice caused her eyes to flutter shut, one last tear slipping unnoticed over her heated check.

"You smell bad."

Translation: You smell like sweat, smoke, puke, alcohol, and a stranger's semen.

"And you're dressed like a hooker."

She managed to nod her head half-heartily. She probably would have agreed with just about anything right now.

"And you look like you haven't slept in days."

It was because she hadn't.

"And you've lost weight. I would know because your boobs look smaller." Damon honey-melted voice ghosted to her ear and she covered her shiver with a small cough.

"I'll stop smoking."

"And drinking?" Damon's hand curved to fit the arc of her rounded hip.

Elena didn't know how much promise she could keep right now…but she was going to say anything to keep Damon happy.

"Yes," she whispered, "I won't get into you stash anymore. You might have to lock it up though. Just to be safe."

Elena could briefly envision Damon's full-lipped mouth twisting into a grin.

"That would probably be smart. Are you finally tired?" He obviously had just seen her yawn.

She detangled long limbs from his and stepped out of his encirclement, motioning to his bed. "Maybe. And seeing how your bed could fit the whole White House staff, I think I'll just make myself comfortable right…here…" She let herself sink into the soft comfort of the mattress.

"Don't you want to take you clothes off? I don't want viral diseases making their way onto this bed."

She stayed where she was, keeping her eyes firmly shut. She wasn't going to move even if her life depended on it. "Just let me sleep, Damon. I'm tired."

Damon was silent for some time. And then he spoke up again. "You're not wearing underwear are you." It wasn't a question.

Elena turned onto her stomach, flashing more skin on her legs than was strictly necessary and burying her face deep into the downy pillow. "Are you?" Her voice was muffled by the cotton. At his plain silence, her mouth twitched at the corners.

"Yeah, didn't think so. Now could you please turn off the light?"

"You're going to sleep with me?"

She snorted lightly. "No, that would just be rude and inappropriate. And you have already expressed your obvious distaste with getting it on with me. But, hey, it's your choice…not much I can do about that." She was trying to tease him now.

"I didn't mean it that way."

"I know. Go turn off the light." And then all was silent again.

Elena briefly heard the sharp padding of Damon's footsteps as he walked away and even behind closed lids, she could still tell that he had snapped off the light. She then felt the mattress dip between his added weight and the rustling of clothes being removed. Damon never slept with a shirt on, just like Elena only slept with a tank top and her comfiest panties.

The sheets were thrown back and Damon went under them, leaving Elena on top.

And then there were no sounds except for the cry of many crickets outside of the windows and the soft breathing in tandem from both people occupying the bed.

But before either she or Damon could go to sleep, Elena managed to voice something through heavy lips.

"Damon?"

"Mmm?" Good, he wasn't sleeping.

"Did I ever tell you that I love you?"

There was really no response from Damon and she wasn't exactly sure if he was coherent anymore. He was probably sick of her talking and took it upon himself to just go to sleep after this long day.

"I may not love you like you love me…but I do love you. And I don't know why I haven't told you this earlier…Maybe it was because you were too busy picking me up from clubs or scraping my hair back when I was busy puking in your toilet, but I think it is probably the right time to tell you that I can't live without you. And I am not just saying that because you let me live in your house…"

At this sentence, Damon breathed out a low laugh, and Elena finally knew that he had not hit the hay without her. He was still listening, just like he always would be.

"I hope you understand all this. I know you lost your brother, your own flesh and blood, and I was just sitting here making it harder for you. I hope you can forgive me."

She licked her dry lips before continuing. "And I hope you know that I will try…for you."

And even though Elena was still facing away from him, she could just imagine Damon smiling at all her confessions.

He only had a couple words for her in response.

"I know, Elena. I know."

.

.

_A/N: And there you have it, folks. This is probably the longest chapter I have written in my life. Actually, it isn't even really a chapter…more like a one-shot. But who knows…If I get insanely bored or I am not busy in any way then maybe I will write more. But considering how long it took me to write this little tidbit, it could take me a while._

_I really enjoyed writing a skanky Elena and a soft Damon. It's like they switched positions! How the hell did that happen?_

_And how awesome was the season 3 premiere of Vampire Diaries? I wish Elena and Damon would just jump each other's bones already…like Caroline and Tyler did. Lol! Well, I should go now. It been a long, long day and I am still battling a nasty cold._


End file.
